Indian Cities Record Decade of Unsafe Air Quality Levels Despite National Clean Air Programme

A decade following the introduction of the National Clean Air Programme by the Centre, a comprehensive analysis of air quality data spanning from 2015 to 2025 has revealed a troubling truth: not one major Indian city has experienced truly safe air quality throughout the entire ten-year period.

The non-governmental organization Climate Trends conducted an extensive study across 11 metropolitan areas, uncovering particularly concerning findings about Bengaluru. Despite its reputation as India's cleanest large city, Bengaluru has never once achieved an annual average in the "good" category. Its Air Quality Index (AQI) has consistently remained between 65 and 90 throughout the decade, perpetually exceeding the safe threshold of 50. This means that even India's supposedly "greenest" metropolis has subjected its inhabitants to unhealthy air conditions every day for ten consecutive years.

Delhi continues to hold the unfortunate distinction as the nation's epicenter of air pollution. Despite implementing various measures including cloud seeding, promotion of cleaner fuels, electric bus deployment, and numerous emergency action plans, the city's annual average AQI still hovers around 180 in 2025. This represents only marginal improvement from the catastrophic peaks above 250 recorded in 2016. This year provided an unexpected natural experiment: despite a significant decrease in farm-fire incidents across Punjab and Haryana, Delhi's winter smog arrived earlier and appeared denser than ever before.

Meteorologists attribute this phenomenon to straightforward yet alarming factors: complete absence of rainfall since October 1, unusually weak Western Disturbances, and an intensifying temperature inversion that has transformed the Indo-Gangetic plain into a massive atmospheric containment zone. Pollutants have no escape route; the Himalayan range blocks northward dispersion, slow north-westerly winds creep across the plains, and cold, dense air traps polluted air near ground level.

This pattern extends throughout northern India. Cities like Lucknow and Varanasi, which regularly exceeded AQI levels of 200 in the late 2010s, have shown some improvement since 2020 but still experience air quality that would be categorized as "unhealthy" by international standards. Other major cities including Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Chandigarh, and Visakhapatnam all exhibit similar trends: moderate but never safe air quality, with occasional improvements that inspire temporary hope before subsequent deterioration eliminates any progress.

Local pollution sources—including vehicles, construction dust, roadside cooking operations, and small industrial activities—have now become more significant contributors than episodic factors such as crop burning. When winter weather conditions align unfavorably with the region, as witnessed in 2025, even substantial reductions in a single pollution source prove insufficient to clear the atmosphere. "We are fighting physics as much as emissions," explains Mahesh Palawat of Skymet Weather, referencing the inversion layer that functions similarly to a pressure cooker lid.

For the millions of street vendors, traffic officers, delivery personnel, and construction workers who spend their workdays outdoors, the implications manifest in reduced lifespans and increased hospitalizations. Researchers caution that relocating to another Indian city offers no escape, as the entire urban landscape is colored in various shades of red and orange on air quality maps.